Product Description

Beneath the extreme, taboo-breaking surface of "Salo" (a controversial and scandalous film made in 1975), Gary Indiana argues that there's a deeply penetrating account of human behaviour which resonates as an account of fascism and as a picture of the corporate world we live in. "Salo" was Pier Pasolini's last film (he was murdered shortly after completing it). An adaptation of Sade's vicious masterpiece, it is an unflinching, violent portrayal of sexual cruelty which many find too disturbing to watch.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #364987 in Books
• Published on: 2000-07-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 95 pages

Review
"Perhaps no other critic has been so alert to the complexities of Pasolini's politics or more discriminating about the frigid acheivements of his film-making."--"Sight and Sound

Customer Reviews

Hyperbolic study of a once infamous film.
Salo, infamously, was Pier Paolo Pasolini's final film before he was bludgeoned to death in the street (allegedly) by a young hustler. His death remains one of the most fascinating 'in suspicious circumstances' ever to transpire in the history of 20th century cinema, on which the director had already left his mark with films like The Gospel According to St Mathew, Medea, The Decameron and The Canterbury Tales, long before he decided to update the Marquis de Sade's story of torture, greed and captivity to the morally-bankrupt Fascist Italy of the 1940's. The film caused a scandal on initial release and was eventually banned from most countries for a number of decades, with many critics even devising theories that the controversy of Salo had ultimately led to its maker's untimely death.

Whether or not this was the case is unknown and sadly, it seems that things of this nature will remain as such. Critic Gary Indiana here, seems non-to interested in mining the deeper implications of the filmmaker's death and the public opinions of the film, save for a few quotes he no-doubt ripped from the archives. The first few segments of the book do offer snippets of interest, with, as the other commentator noted, Indiana offering up a personal and honest account of how he discovered the film and what it (the film) and Pasolini as an artist meant to him at that difficult period in his life. However, considering his position, Indiana's assessment of the film (and the artistic and sociological credentials) are naturally biased, and instead, lean on occasion towards cascading passages of hyperbole. He also fails to offer up a cogent or persuasive argument as to WHY we should experience this film and what we will take from it, with his personal explanation/assessment of the film comprising of little more than passages of verbose descriptions and quotes from other people.

Now, personally, I don't rate Salo as a particularly great work, being a film that, in my opinion, has achieved notoriety not by the assuredness of it's makers nor on cinematic merit (or, even more so on it's subtextual ideology or analogies to the second world war and Fascist dictatorship in general) but more on it's scenes of censor-baiting torture and perversion, the confrontational, hyper-real documentary-style employed during the scenes or rape, humiliation and ritualistic excrement consumption and, of course, the lurid demise of its director. All of these points and more could have been looked at with a greater sense of depth and objection by the critic in order to give those of us who have failed to buy into the hype of this film a reason to go back, re-experience it and try to look for the many merits that Indiana so delights in pointing out.

An interesting companion to Pasolini's final film
Gary Indiana has added to the excellent array of BFI books on films- as with Laura Mulvey's 'Citizen Kane' or Mark Kermode's 'The Exorcist'- this is well-written, informative and aids viewing of the film. It is written out of a passion for cinema- though his put-down of David Mamet as a Sam Shepherd impersonator, when the former was writing plays before/at the same time as the latter is perplexing...Indiana says that he loves and hates 'Salo'- which I think is the correct, measured, analyitical response to this film...Sure, it's vile- the quotation from Angela Carter's 'The Sadian Woman' alludes to this- some of the photographs are particularly unwelcome (those that emanate from the final massacre). Yes, Pasolini was flawed- 'Salo' is boring in the same way Sade's '120 Days of Sodom' or Ellis' 'American Psycho' is. It says the same thing, repeatedly, with a gun to your head and a knife in your eye...Indiana doesn't posthumously saint Pasolini- as many do with artists who die young (Lennon, Marley). He points out a lot of his non-filmwork is...mediocre (his novel, on which he drew 'Accatone' is dull, sub-Celine)...'Salo' is a companion piece to Bertolucci's superior 'The Conformist'- with which it shares actors, technique and the theme of fascism. Both are preferable to the sanctimonius tone of 'Schindler's List'...So, an interesting assessment of one of the most horrible,yet artful films of the 20th century. It will give you a multitude of reasons why extreme art like this matters, some options for further reading and why Pasolini is such an interesting artist...